Blake-Shelton1

The original ‘Footloose’ soundtrack sold more than nine million copies, topped the Billboard charts, and spawned six top 40 singles — two of which went all the way to number one, earning Academy Award nominations in the process.

The remake has some big shoes to fill, needless to say, so you’ve got to give Blake Shelton credit for chutzpah: he covered Kenny Loggins’ chart-topping title track for the new soundtrack, and now you can hear it for yourself.

To hear Shelton tell it, his version of the song was almost never recorded — the film’s producers wanted a female spin on ‘Footloose’ this time around, and originally approached him to handle a different track. “So they threw out ideas for some other songs for me, but I finally just campaigned enough and whined about it enough that they said, ‘Why don’t you cut it, and just let them hear your version?’ So I cut it, gave it to them and they wanted to go with mine. I really lucked out.”

Of course, the original ‘Footloose’ is so closely associated with Loggins that attempting a cover must have been a little daunting for Shelton. He says he tackled the challenge simply by being himself. “When I open my mouth, what comes out is country. It was going to sound country no matter what, but I didn’t want it to be too different. There are two ways to bring back a song: one is to try to make it your own, and in this instance, you have to remove yourself from it and step into the role of what’s best for the movie and that particular scene. There’s really only one way to approach it when you think of it that way: a fun, uptempo, catchy version just like Kenny Loggins did.”

The new ‘Footloose,’ starring Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, and Dennis Quaid, is scheduled to hit theaters on October 14.

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